The COVID-19 situation continues, and at last I’m finding it possible to think about other things, which means I’ve been able to return to working on my next book project. It’s a book about…what, exactly? How I want to shake myself awake—through the body, the senses. I want to reach my mind through my senses. Instead of thinking about mindfulness, I’m thinking a lot about bodyfulness. Well, there’s a certain lack of crispness and clarity at the moment, I admit,…

Human touch is a necessary component to anyone’s happiness, mental health, and well-being. One of the most famous experiments in psychology is Harry Harlow’s experiments on rhesus monkeys in the late 1930s. He put young monkeys in various forms of social isolation (away from their mothers) to see how it influenced their development. While the studies are highly controversial and unethical by today’s standards, they reveal a lot about our need for social connectedness and touch. In one study, Harlow…